


Burning Hydrogen

by VinWrit



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Astronomy, Aziraphale loves Crowley, Character Study, Crowley loves Aziraphale, Don’t copy to another site, Emotions, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, The Fall - Freeform, Tumblr Fic, What happened when Crowley fell..., and also the stars, no beta we die like men, the horrible things called emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 08:13:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19372765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VinWrit/pseuds/VinWrit
Summary: Crowley loves the stars.Aziraphale loves Crowley.





	Burning Hydrogen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [purple_whizzvin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_whizzvin/gifts).



> Gift fic for @genderfluid-whizzvin on Tumblr, in thanks for their tumblr prompt-answering shenanigans.  
> I wrote this when I should have been revising for a Physics mock.... oh well.

* * *

Picture the scene.

In a cozy living room of a small cottage in the South Downs sit an angel and a demon. They’ve just had a glass of wine; just one; each, and an old documentary is playing on the TV.

The angel, Aziraphale, is watching it, but the demon, Crowley, is lost in thought.

He lays sprawled across the sofa* in a remarkably serpentine manner, almost asleep and mostly at ease. There is a pair of round sunglasses on his nose, and his head lies in his counterpart’s lap, face turned to the ceiling.

Aziraphale; a blonde gent who looks remarkably eccentric and almost painfully English; is gently running his hand through the demon’s short red hair, neatly-manicured nails scratching lightly at his scalp. Crowley’s eyes are drifting closed, because the sensation is incredibly calming, and- dare he say it- makes him feel rather at peace with the world.

It was a nice evening. Quiet.

* * *

  
_The Sky at Night_ is definitely becoming a monthly tradition of theirs, and the living-room is filled with grainy footage of the stars and the sound of Sir Patrick Moore’s voice. Aziraphale likes documentaries; he thinks it’s all very nifty; and Crowley likes looking at the constellations.

“D’you know, angel, that I made that one?”

  
Aziraphale looks at where Crowley is gesturing to the screen.

  
“That constellation there. That was me. Y’know. Before.”

“Was it, dear?”

Crowley looks up at the ceiling. He’s lying with his head pillowed in the angel’s lap, his sunglasses on his nose, dressed in a comfy pair of pyjamas that he wouldn’t normally be seen dead in**.  
Aziraphale is dressed in his usual suit, being a celestial being not particularly used to sleeping; but he’s taken off his jacket and sits in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves. This has become a habit.

Aziraphale pets Crowley’s hair, and the demon sighs and continues, curling closer.

“Yeah. That one.”

* * *

 

And it was true. He’d hung the stars like fairy lights across the heavens, brightening the darkness before the Creation.

He’d been different then. The stars had been small, tiny lights floating from his fingertips and falling like snowflakes. They’d been put there by an angel; his name, in the subsequent years, in the space between then and now, had been struck from Heaven’s records.

He’d cast his old names off several times, until he’d found a moniker that fit like a well-loved pair of shoes.

The others were history. They didn’t matter, not anymore. He was Crowley now, had grown into it like a child grows out of old clothes, like a snake shedding its skin.

Whatever he had been called in the Before... the angel who had later become Crowley had loved the stars.

It could have been millennia, but it could just have easily been the space between blinks; because time as a concept hadn’t existed before somebody had decided to mete out their existence in units of sixty. But he had soared among them once, in dizzying spirals on shining wings, lighter than air. It had been silent, and beautiful.  
Time had been meaningless, in the grey before She had thought up the Day and the Night.

He hadn’t forgotten.

* * *

 

That was the thing, about Falling. You didn’t forget any of the Before. If anything, the past had seared itself even deeper into his mind, written itself in indelible ink on the inside of his skull.

He remembered it all with perfect clarity.

He hadn’t fit in, as an angel***. He’d preferred the solitude of space to the bustle in the Silver City, and Gabriel; in control even then; had let him go. He hadn’t been anyone important, just one of the little guys.

He couldn’t sing, couldn’t fight; he hadn’t been missed among the Choirs.

What he could do was Imagine, and he did it well.

He’d written the laws of Physics in his own hand, and had then carefully set about learning how to break them. Nebulae had been born under his care, galaxies had bloomed where there was only blackness. He had filled rivers and formed planets with a flick of a hand. But the stars were always his favourite.

He’d looked different, too. His eyes had always been golden; not a heavenly blue or divine green or - _Satan forbid_ \- purple; but they hadn’t always been so serpentine. His hair hadn’t been so bright then, hadn’t been a literal red flag to those he encountered; that was because of the Hellfire. And his wings; his wings had been magnificent. They had been the wings of a macaw, resplendent in all the colours of the world; _and, oh, how he’d loved them!_

Now they were the colour of lead, and they were heavy, too.

Gravity held him to earth. All that stuff about _crawling on his belly like the snake he was_ ; something the Book had actually gotten half-right.  


* * *

 

He couldn’t fly, no matter how he tried. Not anymore. It _hurt_.

God Herself had said it, and therefore that was just how it was. There were no more stars for him.

* * *

  
The thing was, he had _never really_ been angry about Falling. It had just happened, and he just had to hope that it was all part of the Plan. He was just another piece in the cold clockwork of God’s universe. Most days, that was enough.

He couldn’t help being a mite bitter; but then, anyone would be bitter after a million-lightyear free-fall without a parachute. The landing; slamming hard into cold ground, and through; that had hurt. The sulphur and brimstone had stung like anything.

He had healed eventually; it was why he hadn’t simply withered into nothing; Lucifer, who had once been Samael and would later be Satan, had healed the wounds and sent him to go cause trouble.

The devil had been kind, once, had been an angel like the rest of them.

He could still feel the burns beneath his skin. They would never really leave, and his extremities were constantly icy and cold from the air that had once rushed by.

Crowley was always cold, without the stars; but at least now, with his angel in their cottage, he felt a little warmer.

* * *

  
  
Back to the present. The living room. Back to the TV and it’s dusty documentary. Back to two empty wine glasses and a lovely bottle of Red.

“I _can’t_.” Crowley whispered. “Not anymore. I can’t create suns or spin moons from air. I lost that when I fell.”  
His voice cracked.

“Oh, _Crowley_.”

Aziraphale shifts and stands, forcing Crowley to sit up or be flung to the floor. He brushed a thumb across the demon’s cheek, reverent, soothing; cradling his chin in a warm, calloused palm and pressing a kiss to his brow. Crowley was tearing up behind his sunglasses, and Aziraphale plucked them from his face and set them gently on the table. He knelt.

“Crowley. Come here, my dear, give me your hands.”

Crowley, confused, leant forward, and Aziraphale laid his warm palms over his hands, interlacing their fingers.

“Go on, dear. Try. I’ll help.”

Crowley choked on something between a sob and a laugh, his hands feeling warm for the first time in millennia. He could feel the love, suffusing from the angel’s warm skin into his veins, could feel it prickling beneath his skin like an electric current; and Aziraphale was glowing with Grace, more angelic than anything the serpent had ever laid eyes on. And he shut his eyes, feeling the heat of the angel as that documentary kept playing in the background.

“Go on, Crowley, dearest.”

Crowley sighed, concentrating everything he was into the pocket of space above their intertwined fingers, palm to palm. The sudden tension drained out of him, his shoulders dropped, and the air in front of his face grew marginally hotter...

Amber eyes snapped open, pupils widening in wonder, and the demon laughed in joy and threw his arms around the angel, six-thousand years of weight lifting from him.

_Hovering in front of them, small but bright and burning something fierce, was a tiny, tiny sun._

* * *

 

 (* A dark-blue velvet object from the twenties, which had come with the house and is surprisingly comfy.)

* * *

 

(** They’re black, at least, to keep up demonic appearances. Let it never be said that Crowley had no taste.)

* * *

 

  
(***not that he fit in any more as a demon,)

* * *

 


End file.
